tion of Christ, this
is the true ecstasy, this is man's ultimate blessedness.

And this blessedness is competent not only to those who saw with the
bodily eye, but much more to those who have not seen and yet have
believed. Why do we rob ourselves of it, and live as if it were not
so--as if such certitude and the joy that accompanies it had passed from
earth and were no more possible? We cannot apply Thomas' test, but we
can test his test; or, like him, we can forego it, and rest on wider,
deeper evidence. Was he right in so eagerly confessing his belief? And
are we right to hesitate, to doubt, to despond? Should we have counted
it strange if, when the Lord addressed Thomas, he had sullenly shrunk
back among the rest, or merely given a verbal assent to Christ's
identity, showing no sign of joy? And are we to accept the signs He
gives us of His presence as if it made little difference to us and did
not lift us into heaven? Have we so little sense of spiritual things
that we cannot believe in the life of Him round whom the whole fortunes
of our race revolve? Do we not know the power of Christ's resurrection
as Thomas could not possibly know it? Do we not see as he could not see
the boundless spiritual efficacy and results of that risen life? Do we
not see the full bearing of that great manifestation of God's nearness
more clearly? Do we not feel how impossible it was that such an one as
Christ should be holden of death, that the supremacy in human affairs
which He achieved by absolute love and absolute holiness should be
proved inferior to a physical law, and should be interrupted in its
efficacious exercise by a physical fact? If Thomas was constrained to
acknowledge Christ as his Lord and his God, much more may we do so. By
the nature of the case our conviction, implying as it does some
apprehension of spiritual things, must be more slowly wrought. Even if
at last the full conviction that human life is a joy because Christ is
with us in it, leading us to eternal partnership with Himself,--even if
this conviction flash suddenly through the spirit, the material for it
must have been long accumulating. Even if at last we awake to a sense of
the present glory of Christ with the suddenness of Thomas, yet in any
case this must be the result of purified spiritual affinities and
leanings. But on this very account is the conviction more indissolubly
intertwined with all that we truly are, forming an essential and
necessary part